The Carl Sagan Institute: Pale Blue Dot and Beyond was founded in 2014 at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York to further the search for habitable planets and moons in and outside the Solar System. It is focused on the characterization of exoplanets and the instruments to search for signs of life in the universe.[1][2] The founder and current director of the institute is astronomer Lisa Kaltenegger.
The institute, inaugurated in 2014 and renamed on 9 May 2015, collaborates with international institutions on fields such as astrophysics, engineering, earth and atmospheric science, geology and biology with the goal of taking an interdisciplinary approach to the search for life elsewhere in the universe and of the origin of life on Earth.[1][3]
Carl Sagan was a faculty member at Cornell University beginning in 1968. He was the David Duncan Professor of Astronomy and Space Sciences and director of the Laboratory for Planetary Studies there until his death in 1996.[1]